When bringing human-centered approaches into the innovation process, teams can often feel unsure how to best meld the two practices together. Teams often fall into two common pitfalls:
- Overemphasizing human needs and losing sight of the business and marketing content.
- Bringing human needs into existing processes too late.
To avoid these pitfalls, setting a vision for your innovation team and establishing a flexible process must take place to ensure human-centered design principles are shaping strategy. Next time you’re exploring your innovation pipeline, reflect on:
- Have I truly empathized with my consumer?
- What need is this idea solving for?
- How are consumers articulating this need?
- How does this idea fit with the business objectives of my organization?
- Is this a capability the team already has, or do you need to build it?
- Does this fit with the brand vision and existing equity?
- What will it take to make this a success?
-
What are the launch strategies and investment required?
-
Are there competitors already in the space that we need to differentiate from?
-
Are consumers willing to pay to solve this need?
-
By ensuring your processes are bringing the human perspective to the forefront, while balancing business and marketing insights, you’ll be able to effectively balance a multitude of stakeholders from executives to your customers.